complexity & change in environment, biomedicine & society

Rethinking nature/culture

Nature/culture distinctions play out in many different and contradictory ways. In turn, there are multiple rethinkings. Below are some that arose or lurked around during a year-long seminar at Rutgers University in 1996-97. The participants were invited to add to and play with the list. Play is important because, even if we reject certain of the dualisms, the ones we accept are probably infected with resonances from the others.

5. in the appeals of environmental movements:
N = (non-human) nature, which has lessons for us
C = people, out of touch with (non-human) nature
R = experience at the frontier (i.e., at the periphery of society and in touch with non-human nature) enhances a person’s ability to intervene back at the center, in modernization (Quiroga), and in family, nation, empire (T. Roosevelt)

R for 5,6 & 7 (R. Williams)
Ideas about nature, naturalness & universality are projections of ideas about favored social order. The authority of these ideas is a socially maintained device, with a definite history tracing back to a human/ divine divide